DVD: 'Summer Hours'

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, April 25, 2010

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SUMMER HOURS dvd cover

SUMMER HOURS dvd cover

Photo: Amazon.com

DVD: 'Summer Hours'

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Something very curious is happening to the film "Summer Hours." Over the past year, this 2008 film has started to become ... a classic. It happens that way sometimes. People see a movie, say, "Yes, absolutely, that was a good one." And then a week goes by, or a month, or six months, and they realize that the movie hasn't gone away. And with that they start to suspect that what seemed merely good was, in fact, great, one of the year's singular cinematic experiences. The film begins on the 75th birthday of the family matriarch (Edith Scob), a woman who has devoted her life to preserving the artistic legacy of her late uncle, a semi-famous painter. Her three kids, all around or a little past 40, arrive for the party - Jérémie Renier, Charles Berling and Juliette Binoche - and there are uneasy tensions underlying the surface. But nothing too bad. From there, the movie plays out as it would, not in melodrama, but real life. The siblings ultimately have a property to dispose of, and the film's big issues come into play, about the way people live today, about losing the past and about a changing Europe. That the film is inherently undramatic - or at least not conventionally dramatic - makes it not as immediately satisfying as you might expect. But the odd effect of this narrative strategy is that, months later, the movie feels as though you've lived it, or that it happened to people you know. Even on DVD, the landscapes look like something out of a Renoir painting, but on Blu-ray the colors really pop. It's gorgeous. Included among the specials is a superb, detailed interview with writer-director Olivier Assayas.

SUMMER HOURS

2008

NOT RATED

CRITERION COLLECTION

$39.95

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